We’re nearing the end of Q1 and our team has been extremely busy mapping out the future of Blockchain Foundry Inc. and Syscoin. We have some major milestones on the roadmap for Q1 2017 and now that we have more accurate projections, as well as insights into Q2 and some of Q3 2017 we wanted to update the community on the future of Syscoin, Blockchain Foundry, brand strategy, products & partnerships as we continue to push for Syscoin’s increased adoption and value. After publishing the Syscoin 2.1 Whitepaper Blockchain Foundry received a lot of interest in both general blockchain consulting as well as efforts tied directly to Syscoin’s expanded use cases. Progress in both of these areas has the potential to which could greatly increase Syscoin’s value.

We strive to be as agile as possible and because these opportunities could lead to funding, increased value for Syscoin and more rapid development of future products we’ve prioritized seizing the opportunity to work with these organizations, while still ensuring “Blockmarket Desktop” be ready with minimal delays and “Blockmarket Web” alpha be ready in time for Consensus where we’ll be meeting with some of these partners and some large investors. Blockmarket Desktop Public Beta will be released in late April followed by the mid-May release of Blockmarket Desktop pending unforeseen circumstances. Much of our roadmap over the coming months is geared around the Consensus conference.

Blockchain Foundry Short Term Product and Release Timeline Projections

Roadmap Updates – Syscoin 2.1.3, Blockmarket Desktop, Blockmarket Web

With a modest team like ours, prioritizing resources is critical and we’ve been able to seize the opportunities that have presented themselves. Fostering these relationships and planning these integrations takes time, as does the research and development needed to service the needs these organizations have expressed to us. That being the case, we’ve had to think carefully about how to mature these early-stage partnerships while also delivering on our product pipeline for 2017. One of our main goals is to increase Syscoin’s value and strengthen Blockchain Foundry’s value pre-investment; these partnerships will help us reach these goals.

After evaluating our options, we’ve decided to slightly rearrange our roadmap. Previously, our first version of “Blockmarket” was targeted for the end of Q1. As we have some additional major news targeted for the end of Q1, our experience tells us that it does not make sense to include a release at the same time as a large marketing push coordinated with one of our major partners as this up-coming announcement is not related to “Blockmarket” and would potentially steal the thunder that “Blockmarket” will create for the fintech industry.

“Blockmarket Desktop” and “Blockmarket Web” alpha will now be targeted for presentation at the “Consensus 2017” conference we will attend in New York, while releasing major updates along the way & building up to this important event. As shown in the diagram below, “Blockmarket Desktop” relies on two major products/components being developed by Blockchain Foundry, in addition to Syscoin itself. Due to our ongoing initiatives, we’re going to release Syscoin 2.1.3 in the next few weeks as well as “Blockmarket Desktop”, while work on the next major Syscoin core release has already begun.

Early in Q2 of 2017, following the release of Syscoin 2.1.3, we will release an entirely new desktop application dubbed “Blockmarket Desktop”; AKA “Blockmarket for Windows” & “Blockmarket for MacOS”. This application is a complete rewrite of the wallet user-interface experience and makes it a more modern and user friendly application – like Coinbase but on the desktop, rather than the wallet experience of today. As the graphic above illustrates, the fundamental components for Blockmarket Desktop are stepping stones to our following product; “Blockmarket Web”. Paving the way to ease-of-use and adoptability, the “Blockmarket Desktop” release alone will greatly improve marketplace-adoption thanks to its more eBay/Etsy like browsing and purchasing experience. The building blocks of “Blockmarket Desktop”/Syscoin Core UI and the Syscoin API enable us to then rapidly deliver “Blockmarket Web” alpha in time for Consensus 2017 so we can demo it there along with “Blockmarket Desktop”, other Blockchain Foundry products, partner initiatives, Syscoin services, a multitude of use-cases, etc. We wanted to make sure that our community was informed before updating our official roadmap.

Work on “Blockmarket Desktop” is well under way aswell as preparing for the Syscoin 2.1.3 core update. Below are just a few of the screens we’re developing for “Blockmarket Desktop”. The UI should all be considered work-in-progress, but development is coming together well. We’ll share more preview screenshots and videos of “Blockmarket Desktop” development as we prepare it for beta release.

Major Syscoin Core Innovations

We are constantly working to improve Syscoin’s implementation, security, reliability, and long-term scalability. As we’ve been having discussions with several Fortune 500 companies about using Syscoin; reliability and scalability really becomes a major concern as it relates to blockchain data storage in general. The current core has many innovations already present to help mitigate scalability issues, however, this does not satisfy the big-data scale that certain companies require.

We’ve had to reassess how data is managed within Syscoin. One specific company inquired about systems that needed to handle “one billion transactions per minute”; these needs require huge amounts of data throughput that cannot be supported by any existing blockchain project. Through research and development, we’ve been able to solve a lot of the problems related to these “enterprise-level” data requirements and we’re working to incorporate this into our next major core-release after the “Blockmarket Web” release. We will issue an innovation update closer to the Consensus 2017 event.

Brand Strategy

Establishing our corporate entity Blockchain Foundry has opened a multitude of doors for us. The newly established entity has enabled our team to engage with large enterprises with the goal of increasing Syscoin’s real-world use. A few entities have helped us guide our technological direction to better serve specific use-cases that they require in order to transform their traditional business processes into more streamlined and cost-efficient blockchain-based solutions. These ongoing discussions have led to opportunities that could greatly increase the value of Syscoin.

As we continue to mature the Blockchain Foundry company identity and now have a better vision of our long-term brand strategy, we’ll be releasing a new Syscoin website in Q2 of 2017 that is a single page & purely informational. This page will share branding and themes with a new Blockchain Foundry website, also to be released in Q2 of 2017 at the same time as the new Syscoin website. The new Blockchain Foundry site will feature a section dedicated to Syscoin and its ecosystem of applications. Quick links to the Azure products offered by Blockchain Foundry powered by Syscoin and easy access to developer API documentation, etc.

This is all part of our long-term strategy to turn Blockchain Foundry into a corporate umbrella that services a variety of blockchain-based offerings and products. From open source projects like Syscoin, to proprietary products like the new “Blockmarket Desktop” & “Blockmarket Web” applications and the various other products currently in our pipeline. Once the new websites are launched, all blog posts (such as the one you are reading) will come from the Blockchain Foundry blog; this blog will be archived for users and investors to access at their convenience.

The Future

Blockchain Foundry is positioned to “push” Syscoin adoption through its pipeline of products and developer tools, some of which have already been released. It also enables us to attract traditional investment, helping accelerate our work; securing seed funding is one of our next and most essential to reach goals. As mentioned, we are already making inroads with Fortune 500 companies, discussing how they can use Syscoin. We’re listening to feedback from the enterprise and consumer markets and using that data to guide our product direction over the next year.

Our goal is to provide value to both the consumer and enterprise markets and create a platform that enables an ecosystem of applications in the process. Our developing network of partners is currently targeted at getting these entities to use the Syscoin platform for real-world applications, to improve and streamline their business operations and increase Syscoin’s value in the process. Syscoin’s full potential has yet to be fully realized; the best is yet to come.

We have also been active in recruiting additional engineering talent as we scale up to demands of the market. We have had ongoing discussions with a few notable individuals known to the community as well-respected Senior Software Developers and we continue to aggressively act to bring in additional talent to help grow as a company and provide value not only to Syscoin investors but to the users who will depend on its services.

Syscoin and Blockchain Foundry’s mission is much larger than just “marketplaces”. Using Aliases as the cornerstone for a new kind of decentralized identity solution that can service a variety of functions for companies in simple yet effective ways that other major blockchain projects struggle to do. These innovations will be part of what we deliver in 2017 following our initial pipeline of products and partnerships. Syscoin and Blockchain Foundry Inc. are on-track for a very successful 2017 and have an exciting lineup of products being released in next few months leading up to Consensus.

We’re excited to announce that today we’re releasing the Syscoin Core 2.1.3 with Segwit fully activated in line with the timeline communicated in our last post. This release is a MANDATORY update. In addition to this new core release we’ve also had a suite of product offerings powered by Syscoin, built by Blockchain Foundry certified and released to the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.

Announcing Blockmarket Desktop Beta 4!We are pleased to announce Blockmarket Desktop beta 4! You will find many improvements in this wallet as it gets close to our release-quality bar we set on the onset of development. We would like to reach a target of 80% in terms of bugs fixed on our bug list before we release BM Desktop to the public on mainnet. Beta 4 fixes a majority of the high-priority issues reported thus far. We hope to achieve 80% target with this release as we continue to pursue a security audit on the finalized code. While the community is working through the [list of fixes](https://github.com/syscoin/blockmarket-desktop-public/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22retest+in+beta4%22), we are working on integrating paging, scrolling and categorized views, escrow and encrypted wallet support. Beta 5 will be feature-complete and barring any major showstopping bug, we will be on the way to releasing our latest major commercial product for Blockchain Foundry!

Blockchain Foundry Update: Full Time Team Members, Office Space and New Developers Joining the Team

We are pleased to provide a business update to the community with some exciting news about our team, working arrangements, office space and some new team members who will be joining Blockchain Foundry.

Recently, both Jag Sidhu and Brad Hammerstron committed to working on Blockchain Foundry and Syscoin on a full-time basis with Willy Ko committing to three days per week. This is a huge step forward for the whole team. We expect it to have a materially positive impact on our overall pace of development and allow us to roll out new products much more quickly than in the past.

___Find out more on Syscoin Slack or Telegram channels. Slack: Join.syscoin.org • Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAEHzByog3h1qutnjhQ___Syscoin has more than just Multisig suppport. Control money, data, documents or departments with account controls.

___Blockmarket Desktop v1.0 ReleaseWe are proud to announce the achievement of the latest milestone produced by our company, Blockchain Foundry Inc. Today, we officially launch Blockmarket Desktop v1.0.___The Blockmarket Desktop v1.0 launch kicks-off a first among a series of e-commerce releases; followed shortly by Blockmarket Web Beta due before the end of 2017. We are happy to offer this version of Blockmarket completely free of charge to our greatest supporters, the Syscoin community.___As of today, Blockmarket Desktop is now the official Syscoin “flagship” software and we will ensure to keep Blockmarket Desktop updated with new functionality and any required maintenance. We will also continue to support the Syscoin QT wallet, however, future releases will no longer include the additional features that Blockmarket Desktop now provides. For developers, we have ensured that console commands will remain accessible via the QT software.___You can download Blockmarket Desktop V1.0 here: https://github.com/syscoin/blockmarket-desktop-public/releases/tag/1.0.0___Read the full blog post here: https://medium.com/@BlockchainFoundry/blockmarket-desktop-v1-0-release-b09ae68d07fe